There’s an app for just about everything it seems, including apps for parking tickets, apparently. One of these apps, called Fixed, is specifically designed to do several things with parking and/or traffic tickets. When you get a ticket, you take a picture of it with your camera on your phone. From there, the app allows you to automate the process of paying the ticket or disputing it. Specifically, by scanning the picture of the ticket you’ve taken, the app will automatically scan the ticket for common mistakes that are made that might invalidate the ticket entirely, at which point you can use the app to lodge your dispute. Sounds incredibly useful, right?Well, three California cities think it’s so useful that they’ve done everything in their power to block people from using it to dispute or pay their tickets, because that’s apparently easier than getting officers to simply write tickets correctly.

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The startup has had issues with the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA) for some time. The agency was never all that receptive to the service, and the way it automated the ticket contesting process for locals. Using its app, Fixed customers could snap a photo of their parking ticket using their phone’s camera, and then Fixed would check against a variety of common errors before writing a customized letter to the city on the user’s behalf. The app also cleverly tapped into Google Street View to check to see if the city had the proper signage in place in the area a ticket was received. However, even when customers didn’t beat their ticket, the app could help automate the payment without having to use a city’s often outdated website.Of course, the cities haven’t been welcoming to an app that was aimed at helping locals not pay their tickets by automating the process of jumping through legal loopholes. When Fixed began faxing its submissions to SFMTA last year, the agency emailed the startup to stop using their fax machine. When Fixed pointed out that it was legal to do so, the agency simply shut off their fax.

Keep it classy, San Francisco. It turns out that Los Angeles and Oakland all behaved similarly with respect to Fixed, harrassing and blocking the app and the people using it to the point where the makers of the app simply shut down the parking ticket part of the software in those three cities. This despite the app successfully contesting something like a third of the tickets that users had chosen to dispute using it. Drink that in for a moment. A sizeable percentage of parking tickets were found to have errors on them using this app and, rather than address this by having tickets be properly filled out, the cities in question decided instead to keep people from using the app to contest these error-ridden tickets. It’s hard to imagine how a city might be able to display more contempt for its own citizens than this.And what’s really crazy about this? The app had as much to do with getting people to pay their valid tickets on time as it did contesting the incorrectly filled out tickets.

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“It’s unfortunate that the SFMTA decided to block our service. Over 60,000 parking tickets had been submitted to Fixed. Not only were we helping people beat their unfair parking tickets, but the alerts on our app were helping people pay their parking fines on time and avoid late fees,” [Founder David Hegarty] continues. “Parking Ticket Fines account for 15% of the SFMTA operating budget, and it looks like they objected to us providing some accountability to their process,” Hegarty adds.

Hmm, it’s almost like the city knows it’s collecting money it might not deserve and doesn’t want to let a simple piece of technology stop that gravy train…

OZschwitz serfs don't have a say: Residents are furious over a plan to expand the Highway

A major upgrade to one of Melbourne's busiest river crossings has angered long-time residents, who face having highway lanes paved at their doorsteps in order to save trees, time and money.

Hundreds of homes in Alphington will have a new six-lane highway run along their property line under a VicRoads preferred design option to upgrade the Chandler Highway, which is ranked among the city's worst for traffic congestion.

The traffic chaos Sydney is about to endure won't just be for Monday – it'll be forever

Planning for this moment has been years in the making. On the eve of the closure of the first section of George Street between Market and King streets, Sydney's top transport officials can only hope that commuters heed their warnings to steer clear of driving into the CBD.

Unlike the Olympics in 2000 which lasted for just two weeks, Sydneysiders are about to endure years of transport turmoil while one of the key arterial routes in the CBD is ripped up to build tram lines from Circular Quay to Randwick and Kensington in the city's east.

The closure of the first section of George Street to vehicles will occur at 8pm on Friday, followed by another strip between Market and Park streets on December 3.

The Roads and Maritime Services is pursuing a community group for potentially hundreds of thousands of dollars after their legal bid to preserve the historic Windsor Bridge failed.

The Community Action for Windsor Bridge group's leaders say they will be left bankrupt or forced to sell their homes and businesses if they are slapped with cost orders for a case they believe is in the public interest.

4) Infrastructure. After the Revolution in the US it was a very contentious point. Between 1800 and 1830 there was an explosion of canals and road constructions, all private. The first, very contentious federal investment were in the Eire canal (successful) and in the transcontinental railways (a disaster). By the way, in the Middle Ages almost all roads were private, the developers had very sophisticated pricing algorithms, all the way to let heavy carriage with thin wheels to pass free because it actually helped the road. Even that archetype of public good, the lighthouses, were private in England until the xviii century.

A 22-year-old man who lost his left arm and nearly died in a motorcycle accident while travelling through roadworks near Perth Airport has described the horrifying moment a vehicle came to rest on his head, only for him to be saved by his helmet.

Despite years of warnings that the nation's roads, bridges and transit systems are falling apart and will bring nightmarish congestion, the House on Thursday passed a six-year transportation bill that maintains the spending status quo.

The bill, approved on a bipartisan vote of 363-64, authorizes $325 billion in spending through the 2021 federal budget year. But it provides money for only the first three years because lawmakers couldn't agree on a way to pay for it all. The measure would continue current rates of spending, adjusted for inflation.

Sacramento-area freeways and roads are crowded again. Some say more than ever.

We hear complaints that Sunrise Boulevard is a parking lot during commute hours. A 20-minute drive on Highway 99 in Elk Grove can turn into 60 minutes with just one fender bender. The Capital City Freeway over the American River is a no-go zone even on weekends.

As the housing market heats up, bringing more people here, how do you keep a bad situation from getting worse?

Sacramento County is considering asking voters to OK a new transportation tax next year for anti-congestion projects as well as basic pothole filling. But the real sign of desperate times comes from fiscally conservative Placer County, where normally tax-shy officials are thinking of floating their own transportation sales tax in November 2016.

It is no surprise that local road conditions are mediocre at best. Many roads are stricken with pot holes and cracks, leaving residents concerned about safety.

“It’s a terrible wear on my vehicle,” says Jean Kroetsch, a 66-year resident of Witmer Road in North Tonawanda. “If there’s no cars coming, half the time I drive down the wrong side of Warner Avenue because it’s so bad ... because I don’t want to ruin my car.”

COMMENT: I parked near the perpetrator in the black Mercedes SUV and ran different scripts through my mind. I had daydreamed about this moment for years.As I got out of my car, I reminded myself about the oath I had taken years earlier: to combat recklessly indifferent drivers who endangered others. I walked over to the driver in the Mercedes who had given me the finger because I beeped at him for swerving across three lanes to make a sudden turn. For years I had been blowing out vocal cords over such brazen displays of unaccountability. This time, I was taking my quest to a new level.I took a deep breath and knocked on the black-tinted window. The driver lowered it, and I saw someone I didn't expect: a man with rheumy blue eyes with age spots on his bald head. He was surely in his mid- to late-70s, a member of the Silent Generation, known for its stand-up commitment to civic virtue. He glowered at me.For a moment I was knocked off kilter. I was relieved by his age but also unnerved by it. I thought that motorists of this generation were above the turbo-charged narcissism that endangers most roadways these days. I stood before this man who had 25-plus years on me and felt feeble. Had I taken my quest too far?In some ways, every action I'd taken behind the wheel since my brief stint with a heavy-lidded psychologist 14 years earlier had led to this moment. After hearing me vent about rude drivers, she, too, cut me off. "If you'd stop taking other people's reckless driving so personally, then - voila - you'd feel much better," she said. And she did get that right. Sort of.I was taking strangers' reckless driving too personally, but not only for myself. As I saw it, I was taking it on for everyone else, too.It so galls me to watch innocent motorists on the bullying end of treacherous cutoffs that I sometimes tailgate the perps. I'm not above following them into shopping centre parking lots and leaving handwritten notes on their windshields. Some of my scolds: "Drive as if you're aware that other humans are on the road" and "As a matter of fact, you don't own the road!"Two years ago my son, Macallah, ran around the house chanting, "Roood man! Rood man!" When I asked his babysitter what this was about, she said they had just come from the gas station. She had asked the motorist at the pump in front of her if he wouldn't mind pulling up a little. "F--- you!" he yelled.Such moments leave me worried to the brink of existential crisis. How can I - how can any of us? - tacitly accept that our roads are a free-for-all where contempt reigns? Will the roads for our children be paved with a Mad Max anarchy where we replace headlights with howitzers?Passengers and friends often ask, "Do you really think you're making a difference with this small-time vigilantism?" My wife, Liz, recently observed, "Aren't you really as bad as the people you claim to seek justice against?" But I never felt any shred of guilt over my crusade. Until recently. I was driving with Macallah, now 4, when someone cut in front of me with deadly speed and proximity."Are you kidding me?" I screamed and laid on my horn.From his child seat Macallah yelled, "I want to hurt that bad driver! I want to crash his car!""What?!" I yelled. "We don't want to hurt bad drivers.""Why not?" Macallah asked."Because ... because ... we don't hurt people just because they do dangerous things.""Why not?" Macallah asked. "They might hurt us."It was a fair observation that got me wondering: Beyond getting worked up about reckless drivers, what exactly did I want from this lonely, mostly futile campaign?Despite my lack of clarity, I'd had some success with errant motorists, using my horn as a sonic knuckle rapping. Sometimes I'd see drivers quickly correct their trespass farther down the road. Still, this momentary shift in civility was fleeting. And I sensed where I'd eventually end up."Whadda you want?" the older man in the black Mercedes SUV barked as I stood there stunned. I still couldn't believe that this man was driving like some text-addled teenager.Finally I spoke. "Excuse me," I said. "I'm the - ""I know who you are. You're the guy I cut off. Whadda you want?" Ugh. I couldn't shake that question.His brazen negligence stoked my courage. "You could kill people driving that way. Please be more careful.""Who the hell do you think you are, telling me how to drive?" he bellowed, jumping out of the car and ramming his door into my knees. "What the hell do you want?"Finally, I had an answer:"Please be more accountable," I blurted, protecting my knees. "Drive as if you're aware that other people are on the road.""F--- you - and everyone else!" he yelled and raised an open hand.I looked around for validation from bystanders that this dystopian moment was really happening, but everyone walked by seemingly oblivious. The man drove off.For weeks after that encounter, when I leaned on my horn, it emitted the nasal hesitation of the outcast.A month or so later, I was sitting at a traffic light when a car pulled alongside me. The driver lowered the passenger window. He looked to be in his late 20s or early 30s, with tightly cropped hair that bristled like tiny weeds. "It's not very neighbourly of you to take up a lane where other folks might want to turn," he said, smiling, his eyes steeled in a familiar cast.I was incredulous. This was a lane that allowed for either going straight or turning. My mind raced with ways to respond to this pedantic upstart when I was overcome by an entirely different impulse."Thank you," I said. "It must be hard to say something like that to a stranger.""You have no idea," he said. "Sometimes I feel as if I'm the only one on the road who cares about such things."* Andrew Reiner teaches at Towson University near Baltimore.